Selling Clothes Online? You Could Be Taxed Under New HMRC Rules
- Online platforms like eBay and Vinted now report sales data to HMRC
- Sellers earning over £1,700 or selling 30+ items a year may face tax bills
- The £1,000 trading allowance still applies before tax kicks in
Selling second-hand clothes online may seem like an easy way to declutter and make extra cash, but new HMRC rules mean some sellers could face tax bills. Since January last year, platforms like eBay, Vinted, and Etsy have been required to report sales information to HMRC, allowing the taxman to track extra income.
Casual sellers who offload used clothes at a loss—such as selling a £50 pair of jeans for £5—won’t be affected. However, those reselling items for profit, especially in high volumes, could be liable for tax. HMRC will be notified if a seller has sold over 30 items in a year or earned more than £1,700.
The first £1,000 of income from side hustles is covered by the trading allowance, meaning anything beyond this must be declared via a self-assessment tax return. Deductions for expenses may apply, but sellers could still end up with a tax bill.
Tom Church, Co-Founder of LatestDeals.co.uk, said: “If you’re just clearing out old clothes, there’s no need to worry. But if you’re regularly flipping items for profit, it’s worth keeping track of your earnings to avoid unexpected tax bills.”
Talk about stifling enterprise. Many past businesses started in a similar way and ended up with big businesses employing many. They can't stop shoplifters but pick on the easy targets to show they are doing something. Again shame on you.
I'm a terrible hoarder of stuff and have a collection of older technology literature, hardware and software I'm clearing out at a loss but more than the allowance and from what I understand there are millions of people that sell through ebay and could be above 30 items or £1700 a year so how are they going to process this, I'm not seeing HMRC advertising for 1000s of extra staff to process all this. Then you have the people that are really struggling and won't be able to pay HMRC fines etc which will probably run into 10s of 1000s of people. I was in CEX and a person was selling their console and loads of games and heard them comment they didn't want to sell but had to as they spoke about their child understanding. People are being forced to sell stuff to get funds for important bills. Will they be taxed for this if they sell too much. I feel the threshold should be set as £8000 for example and see how it goes and if they can cope with that so be it maybe lower it later but at the moment its widely reported HMRC are not answering their phones as massively understaffed and this will obviously mean people's tax issues are not dealt with correctly. People already paid tax on the purchase of these items.